NBA considering alternative to draft lottery

The NBA is considering an alternative to the draft lottery that has seemingly encouraged teams to lose purposely — or “tank,” as the practice is commonly known — in order to improve their odds.

Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports that a proposal is gaining traction among league officials to replace the lottery, which initially began in 1985, with a “wheel” system that would cycle all 30 teams through each draft slot over the course of 30 years in a predetermined order.

Every team would pick in the top six every five seasons, and at least once in the top 12 every four years. For example: The team slotted No. 1 in the initial season would then pick at 30, 19, 18, 17, 6, 25, 23, 14, 11 over the next nine years. Lowe’s piece includes a graphic to illustrated the entire cycle.

There are a number of obvious criticisms with the system, particularly the fact it could eliminate hope for bottom-feeding teams of quickly turning their fortunes around with top picks, a key feature that separates U.S. professional sports from, say, European soccer.

There’s also the certainty of top teams getting elite picks. (Can you imagine, say, the Heat getting the top pick in next year’s draft, which could be one of the deepest in history?)

Then, as one of my Twitter followers pointed out, you’d likely have situations where top players would delay entering the draft to avoid playing for bad teams, knowing they wait a year to play for a contender of the day.

Lowe plows through a pile of other potentialities, but this much is certain: The lottery, which was intended to prevent teams from intentionally dropping games for draft purposes, no longer works — if it ever did in the first place. It is no coincidence that 18 out of 30 teams are under .500 with what is expected to be one of the richest draft classes in recent memory on the horizon.

Ineffective as it might be, the Spurs would surely love to see it continue given their fortunate history. They’ve qualified for the lottery three times, netting David Robinson (1987), Sean Elliott (1989) and Tim Duncan (1997).